why it is elusive. it is simple point. If they feel their system cannot perform they will simply improve it to deal with new reality. They can create new facts. there are plenty of examples of it.

Unimportant in context. The point was made that shipboard defensive systems could not cope with Yakhont/Onyx or, presumeably, Kh-22. I countered that belief citing factual example. Simple as that.

The problems of Onyx and Kh-22 are manifest anyway, and well documented on this site, for a kick-off you need a profile that keeps you out of your principal targets sensor envelope in the first place. Onyx, on its maximum standoff range profile, is an altitude cruiser before dropping to sea-skim in the terminal phase….whoops!. Kh-22 is a bloody great diver….whoops!.

Neither system needs just a ‘simple improvement’ to give it a chance of defeating current and near-term generation shipboard air defence.

Don’t know how good searam is but the other shipboard defensive systems.
will NOT syop the SS-22 or ONYX.

ESSM has already been proven against a Vandal target simulating the Onyx/Yakhont profile under NAVSEA testing. SeaRAM should be capable against those weapons as much as against any other active radar weapon…as will conventional softkill decoy/jamming techniques. ONYX I’m afraid is old news.

SS-22 was, I thought, a 900km ranged liquid-fuelled SRBM that was dispensed with under the INF treaty?. As such it shouldnt present too many problems for a US battlegroup!. I will assume therefore that you mean Kh-22 (NATO: AS-4 Kitchen) which is pretty much the weapons system that the SPY1/SM2 radar/missile combination was designed to defeat. The British GWS30 Sea Dart system was quite capable of intercepting Kh-22 as well.

Could you provide some indication of the source of your confidence in Onyx and Kh-22 perhaps?

So how long in advanced did they plan on deploying those mines then? As I’m sure nothing will make the soviet high command’s day more then a haul of AMRAAMs for them to take apart and study. It was a bad idea then and still is now.

Here you go again PLAWolf. NATO had subs up in those waters constantly yet we’d have sown mines right where we knew they’d get picked up?!. Come on man dont be obtuse!. Unless the Russians routinely swept their coast at these points, which they didnt – fact known from routine observation, there is no reason to suspect that the mines would ever even have been detected. Plus there were quite a few other sneaky-beaky items that NATO SSN’s left in sensitive waters up there that weren’t discovered for years so there is plenty of precedent for this ‘bad idea’!.

Its a one trick pony that depends almost exclusively on the ‘suprise’ factor. Unless the US develops them in total secrecy, their effectiveness will be majorly limited if the PLA is expecting them.

Actually a three-trick pony as there is no reason why the missile load out would have to be exclusively SAMs. Still could embark a decent TLAM onload along with the SAMs and there is always the spec forces accomodation and apparent SDV capability. The main ‘trick’ though – the discrete, invulnerable to SEAD, siting of a large battery of of active, area, SAMs is something not easily achieved by any other platform. Even if I accepted the one-trick comment, from an already-paid-for hull, its a pretty good trick!.

Besides, its the SM6 missile that makes this concept even theoretically practical. But such a missile can be deployed on surface ships for a similar effect at a fraction of the cost and risk.

Poor attempt at misdirection there PLAwolf – the advantage of siting the missiles on a submerged, largely invulnerable, platform over that of a surface escort is very obvious in the threat environment.

Who said anything about running around on active all the time?

Crobato – least thats what he seemed to be saying?.

Fact of the matter is that for an SSGN to fire SM6s would be the same as it doing the pinging as the noise from the launches will allow every nearby boat to pinpoint it. Not something any USN skipper would want to do on a regular basis in SSK infested waters.

Oh please dont give me that launch transient junk AGAIN. Shout out for an accoustic barrier round the SSGN, just before firing, and that blocks any kind of transient detection – a couple of escorts banging away on active would probably be sufficient to mask the silo hatch opening and the missile deployment – certainly for any PLAN battery-powered SSK set likely to be in theatre. You would have been better off guessing that PLAAF AWACS might get a radar hit on the missiles point of origin when they get airborne Wolf!.

Besides, running on active might not be as bad an idea as you might think. The PLAN’s old Mings are so noisey they’d be easily found even if they wanted to run silent, so they might as well not even try and ping away. With some modern Songs, Kilos and Yuans lurking nearby, it won’t be as foolish as you might think. And the PLAN would gladly trade Mings for Sea wolves and Vaginans.

Still consistently a believer in sending your naval forces out to their unfortunate demise in shoddy boats then PLAWolf?. Last time we discussed PLAN ops you sacrificed all the PLAN FAC crews on the Taiwan altar…least the Mings crews will have some company in the afterlife eh?!. More importantly one wonders precisely what the SSGN skipper would be doing letting a noisy old SSK, banging away on its active gear, get a hit on him, for the other SSK types to exploit, when he should have been creeping off in the other direction at the first hint of an active sonar pulse.

Not if the SSGN ever plan on using any of its missiles. As soon as it start shooting, its no longer ‘invisible’. Thats going to have a big impact on both the engagement time of SSGNs(the longer you shoot, the longer you stay put and the greater the chance an SSK will get you), and also its availability (if you ‘shoot and scoot’, you are not going to be in a position to fire missiles as you move position).

The transient thing has been covered, firing does not automatically give the game away, besides how many engagements do you anticipate this boat staying in for?. Even with a couple of hundred SM’s its going to go through them within a relatively short timeframe. Optimistically one might give the subsurface SM-6’s a, real-world, pK of 0.5 i.e two missiles on each target. Finding 100 or less air targets over PLAAF assembly areas and the Taiwan Strait shouldnt be difficult…so you are probably looking at two, perhaps, three engagements tops, within a short duration, then the sub is creeping off for reload.

All that makes an SSGN SAM a far cry from an effective AD weapon. Its more of a one-shot-wonder nausence weapon.

The mere presence of such a discrete capability is going to impact PLAAF planning and if the ‘one shot wonder’ accounts for 70-80 downed air targets on its own if called into action, all for the price of a few modifications to the launch systems on the SSGN and a CEC/buoy comms fit then, IMO, its quite probably a successful system.

How exactly is the RoCAF going to get any E2s into the air when the PLA has over a thousand ballistic missiles deployed to stop things just like that?

Wow PLA Heavy Rocket Artillery units have a 1000 ballistic missiles that they would be able to fire on a seconds notice (so as not to tip off RoCAF to scramble aircraft) and they can fire them simultaneously can they?. Impressive if they can get the whole RoCAF on the ground, before an airforce, well-used to staring down the barrel of ‘1000 TBM’s’, can get some aircraft aloft?!.

And how many proposed projects have been binned after just such ‘serious looks’ found the entire concept fatally flawed?

Many have been binned without being ‘fatally flawed’ as I stated initially though…this sub-surface-to-air concept does have a habit of resurfacing every now and again…if you’ll forgive the pun!.

This SSGN SAM shooter concept is just a new variation on an old idea!. It would work too!.

The original concept was a modified encapsulated AMRAAM in a naval mine. The concept was that a few dozen of these AMRAAM-mines would be sown just offshore of the Backfire bases on the Kola Peninsula and would be activated when US IRsats/SSN’s started detecting regiment sized launches. Firing was completely blind and relied on US observation of Tu-22 operations from the bases in question identifiying forming up areas etc. The lack of friendly aircraft in the area mitigated the RoE problems naturally.

The problem, really, with a SAM-SSGN is operational need. The only theatre that it could conceivably be of value….now that the Backfires arent the worry they once may have been…is Taiwan. Having a battery of a couple of hundred advanced SAM’s on a discrete platform invulnerable from rapid air assault IS a system which would upset the PLAAF measurably too – lets be under no illusions on that one.

The concept of PLAN SSKs prowling up and down the straits banging away on active, to try and eliminate the SSGN is frankly ludicrous also. Its tantamount to the PLAN inviting any surface or subsurface platform to blow them out the water. No SSK skipper would entertain such a course of action.

The problem for the PLAN/PLAAF is ironically similar the the counter-SSK scenario that they have presented potential aggressors. The SSGN doesnt move much once on station, thats a given, with 200nm missiles it pretty much doesnt need to anyway. Its comms are on a schedule…once on station and at defence watches/alert-condition it streams VLF and floats a buoy on a predetermined go signal. The target is therefore extremely discrete and that places the onus on the agressor to dig it out of where its hiding. Best way to do that today is with a low-freq active towed array backed by lots of choppers. Problem for PLAN is that they dont have any low-freq active tails deployed and choppers against an SM-6 ‘arsenal ship’ would redefine the concept of suicide!.

The RoCAF E-2’s will in all probability see a PLAAF strike package forming and there is little reason to believe that the SSGN couldnt be fully cued up within a few minutes of the E-2 raid analysis being completed. This could also be a good solution to the targetting problem…squadron sized groups of Flankers, JH-7’s etc should appear to be quite different to more innocent targets on radar…least I’ve not heard of many instances of Airbus’ full of nuns/kids flying around in formations of twenty or more.

Short version is, I guess, I’d be willing to put up £10 of my own money that someone, somewhere, has looked seriously into this as a way of leveraging extra capability out of an already-paid-for hull and CEC/SM6 technology that is being developed anyway.

Ed,

The BAE gun under development would, by necessity, have to incorporate a double stroke loader for seperate charge/shell handling. You are right in what you say about naval mounts using fixed ammunition but this is by no means a necessity. Naval guns used seperate ammunition for a very long time before high-RoF autoloaders demanded fixed ammo.

This weapon has no pretensions of anti-air capability and, as such, no need for a high-RoF. IIRC BAE are aiming for 12 rpm sustained out of the naval mount….a rate that does away with the need for water-cooling.

What you do get is a gun that is already used by many nations, has an excellent support base, and is likely to cost less. It may end up similar to the British Army’s use of the 120mm rifled gun on the CR1 and CR2 – there may be some advantages, but if nobody else buys it, you end up with an orphaned system, with Britain having to foot the whole bill for development.

The article below is BAE’s own release which clearly indicates the commonality issue between Army and Navy employment of the same ‘basic’ weapon. The reference to the 120mm rifled gun is flawed as no-one else uses it in the British armed forces…the Army tends to buy lots of 155mm shells anyway…what is being suggested here is that the Navy could occaisionally leg it ashore, lift a few crates and spirit them off to fill an Escort vessels magazines.

http://www.baesystems.com/Newsroom/NewsReleases/autoGen_1071114103911.html

In such circumstance it matters very little whether lots of other people use 5″ shells the fact is that the supply of 5″ shells the Royal Navy uses would have to be bought solely for the Royal Navy.

Opinions are fine and everyone is obviously entitled to one. Problem is though opinions need to be based on good information for them to be of value. People who base their opinions on faulty or incorrect information and then proceed to demand that their opinion is as valid as anyones elses deserve to be held in contempt!.

This issue is not to be confused with any generic STOVL vs CATOBAR debate either. This is very specifically whether STOVL is suitable for the UK’s Carrier Strike requirement. As stated there are operational circumstances where CATOBAR would be the absolute necessity.

I was not for any moment suggesting a peer rival to the UK, indeed the greatest lesson of the Falklands is that a country does not have to be a peer rival to inflict heavy casualties on an opposing naval force, how many Exocets and How many SuEs did Argentina have? How large was the Argentine Fleet? I have made it perfectly clear in multiple posts that I have not been talking about peer rivals, yet you insist on continuing as if I have been suggesting that some belligerent peer rival will appear within the next 20 years, I can only assume this is becouse you have no answer to what I am actually saying.

No its because you are ambiguous in what you state. What you say above is precisely what I said in stating that Asymmetric warfare is the future. Yet when I say it I’m wrong, myopic and all the rest!?. You now seem to agree that no belligerent state IS likely to appear before the CVF can be mid-lifed, so, can I assume you accept my point that the UK MoD weren’t ‘wrong’ in emphasizing Carrier Strike over Sea Control missions?.

In order to mount a surge attack to the same distance as the B the C would not need tanker support, the additional fuel it carries would easily allow it to loiter whilst the rest of the package was launched, probably with some left over.

I’m sorry SL but again we rock back to the original points being made. An F-35C deploying CASOM is striking at about 750nm downrange from the carrier. The only way we are supporting that strike is from strategic, not tactical, intel as we have no way of organically generating tactical intel at 750nm from a carrier group. So we are shooting at fixed targets from 750nm…we can do that now with TLAM.

I never suggested that the CVF’s were intended purely as sea control ships, this is another nasty habit of yours, putting words in peoples mouths. The point is that carrier strike are not completely independant from one another, in fact they merge quite obviously and that is the point I have been making.

I NEVER said you had stated that the carriers were principle sea control platforms. I said you were damning them for not being so. you yourself said that the RN had its requirement for the carriers wrong and that we were ‘sacrificing’ capabilties to save money.

Further reading your posts again points out that you still have this absurd notion that all the UK will be doing for the next 30+ years is counter insurgency. We only have to go back to 1999 (just 8 years) to find an operation against a reasonably effective opponent, before that there is the 1991 Iraq campaign, and before that the Falklands.

Thankyou for making my point so clearly – we are not going to fight the Desert Storm campaign on our own with a CVF and three squadrons of F-35’s of whatever type so that action can be discounted. The Falklands operation even with ‘only’ F-35B’s and a STOVL CVF is a VERY short campaign, so, again that action can be discounted!. As for Op ALLIED FORCE I dont think I spotted the threat that was keeping a carrier hundreds of miles offshore – in fact, IIRC, we had T22B2’s on Op SHARP GUARD that was patrolling 40nm’s off the coast!. In all three cases the STOVL CVF group would’ve been perfectly capable of undertaking all missions that a CATOBAR group could.

I would urge you to stop repeating your most ridiculous comments, notably ones about potential adversaries, time scales and ‘the first day of war’ as they have already been shown to be of no value.

As demonstrated above SLL the threat-reduction exercise on this one is quite straight forward. It demonstrates, clearly, the capability level necessary to meet the requirements layed down by the Carrier Strike mission. As described above the extra expenditure on CATOBAR over STOVL will be the £hundreds of millions territory and it is very hard to justify that spend when you consider the other platform requirements the RN has.

We NEED T45 hulls 7&8 as insurance against long term mechanical casualty/accident to any of the hulls 1-6. Likewise an additional 1 or 2 Astutes for the same reason. We NEED C3 to be a competent, if austere, warship not some glorified OPV. We really do not need Hawkeyes and ALRE kit taking funding away from these programmes to no great operational benefit.

Right,

John (you know who you are!) I bow to greater wisdom. This is hopeless. One last throw of the dice in as simplified form as it can be made:

1, CVF is NOT INTENDED to be a sea control platform. Its role is Carrier Strike. This is mostly because there is no-one we conceivably could have to face, alone, who could successfully implement sea denial ops against us before CVF’s Mid-Life Refit. No-one at all…even if they do possess BrahMos or Club missiles.

2, STOVL CVF is going to be capable of generating strike sorties against first-day-of-war targets 450nm distant with freefall ordnance and circa 600nm distant with CASOM. It will be capable of generating 100 plus sorties in the first 24hr surge of combat operations and will be able to, comfortably, sustain 72 sorties a day for a further 10 days. These sustained rates are comparable with that attained by US CVN’s, on ops, in the 100-110 sorties per day region with 20 more planes in the airgroup. For a ship costing a fraction of a CVN to purchase and operate this is capability that cannot be understated.

3, In the unlikely event that, over the next two decades, a foreign power evolves the capability to deny blue-water transit to a CVF group then, at MLR, we will be able to refit the CVF’s with the, by-then, fully mature EMALS technology. That is, of course, if catapults etc are necessary for enhanced sea control capability by that time.

I really don’t know how to make this any clearer so I’ll give up trying at this point.